An Evening with Diane Mehta & Kevin Prufer

Start:

Friday, October 11, 2019 - 6:30pm

Location:

2421 Bissonnet St.

Houston, TX77005

In her debut book of poems (FOREST WITH CASTANETS), knit together with personal essays, Mehta explores her own cultural history— Indian Jainism and American Judaism— as well as her ideas about faith, feminism, and family.

Kevin Prufer’s HOW HE LOVED THEM sets love in a fraught, paradoxical world where bombs explode, fields burn, and armies advance. With clear, compassionate eyes, Prufer finds powerful intimacy between fathers and sons, soldiers and civilians, the living and the (sometimes un)dead.

Born in Frankfurt, Germany, and raised in Bombay and New Jersey, Diane Mehta studied with Derek Walcott and Robert Pinsky in the nineties and has been an editor at PEN America’s Glossolalia, Guernica, and A Public Space. Her debut poetry collection Forest with Castanets was published by Four Way Books in 2019 and her book about writing poetry was published by Barnes & Noble books in 2005. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Kevin Prufer was born in Cleveland, OH, and attended Wesleyan University, The Hollins Writing Program, and Washington University. He is the author of seven poetry collections, including the Four Way Books titles How He Loved Them (2018), winner of the 2018 Julie Suk Award and a finalist for the UNT Rilke Prize, Churches (2014), named one of the ten best poetry books of the year by The New York Times Book Review; In a Beautiful Country (2011), a UNT Rilke Prize and Poets’ Prize finalist; and National Anthem (2008), named one of the five best poetry books of the year by Publishers Weekly and a finalist for the Poets’ Prize. Prufer is the recipient of many awards, including four Pushcart prizes, several awards from the Poetry Society of America, fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Lannan Foundation, and several Best American Poetry selections. He is a professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Houston.

YOUR FACE TOMORROW Book 1: Our hero, Jaime Deza, separated from his wife in Madrid, is a bit adrift in London until his old friend Sir Peter Wheeler--retired Oxford don and semi-retired master spy--recruits him for a new career in British Intelligence. Deza possesses a rare gift for seeing behind the masks people wear. He is soon observing interviews conducted by Her Majesty's secret service: variously shady international businessmen one day, would-be coup leaders the next. Seductively, this metaphysical thriller explores past, present, and future in the ever-more-perilous 21st century. This compelling and enigmatic tour de force from one of Europe's greatest writers continues with Volume Two, Dance and Dream.